Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2015
From Schneier on Security
Obama Says Terrorism Is Not an Existential Threat
In an interview this week, President Obama said that terrorism does not pose an existential threat: What I do insist on is that we maintain a proper perspective and that we do not provide a victory to these terrorist networks…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of February 2
Today the President released his Fiscal Year 2016 Budget. Congressional committees will hold hearings over the next several days to review portions of that budget. February 4 Hearing: The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Python Packages for Data Mining
A good overview of the topic: Why Python? and a number of examples of its availability. While I have done data mining and analytics for many years, I have never used Python. But from the few examples I have seen, as a former…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How do you become an expert?
I was asked by one of my students how to become an expert programmer. Peter Norvig has already given an excellent answer: work hard for ten years. Let me revisit the main points that should be common knowledge by now: Do a lot…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Precision Medicine Initiative
The following is a guest blog post by Beth Mynatt, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Vice Chair and professor of Interactive Computing and the executive director of Georgia Tech‘s Institute for People and Technology (IPaT)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facial Emotion Analysis
Well known work by Paul Ekman is covered in the WSJ. " ... The Technology that Unmasks Your Hidden Emotions ... Using Psychology and Data Mining to Discern Emotions as People Shop, Watch Ads; Breeding Privacy Concerns .... Companies…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Accenture on Technology Trends
Venturebeat: Good look at what companies are doing. Not much in detail. " ... The Accenture Technology Vision 2015 says that every business is now a digital business. Companies are leveraging social, mobile, analytics, and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dimensions that Influence Location Value
Good piece in Cisco blog on the topic. Obvious yes, but the following discussion of why and how are very useful for retail applications. By Jagdish Girimaji." .. Since the earliest maps, location accuracy has always been important…
From Schneier on Security
Texas School Overreaction
Seems that a Texas school has suspended a 9-year-old for threatening another student with a replica One Ring. (Yes, that One Ring.) I've written about this sort of thing before: These so-called zero-tolerance policies are actually…
From The Eponymous Pickle
MIT Research on Randomizing Tasks
I worked on a project that looked at how job tasks could be randomized in industrial processes. This research effort at MIT, fairly technical, looks at a more arcane area of massive multicore processors, but still touches on…
From Computational Complexity
Less elegant proofs that (2n)!/n!n! is an integer
(A conversation between Bill (the writer of this post) and Olivia (14-year old daughter of a friend.) All of the math involved is here. Bill: Do you know what 10! is? Olivia: Yes, when I turned 10 I yelled out ``I AM 10!'' …
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Rules in China for Western Tech Companies
We did considerable work with Chinese retailers, attempting to understand their rapid development in conjunction with their complex infrastructure. Now new regulations regarding their work with technology companies. Some say…
From BLOG@CACM
Socializing with Robots at Ginza
Modern social robots are making their debut in our daily lives.
From Schneier on Security
Hiding a Morse Code Message in a Pop Song
In Colombia: The team began experimenting with Morse code using various percussion instruments and a keyboard. They learned that operators skilled in Morse code can often read the signals at a rate of 40 words per minute but…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 2 February 2015
Happy Groundhog Day! We’re having a snow day with schools closed because of a snow storm. I’m betting on six more weeks of winter. It may take that long for all the snow we’ve had in the last 10 days or so to melt. I’m not complaining…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Risk Analytics Day
The UC Center for Business Analytics will host Risk Analytics Day on February 11, 2015 8AM - 4:30PM at the Tangeman University Center (TUC) on the campus of the University of CincinnatiThree speakers will present in the AM and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Wearable Private Cloud?
Interesting upcoming kickstarter. Have not looked at it seriously yet. If it makes any sense will mention it again. And its on Twitter." ... Do you trust that your data in the cloud is safe? Every day it seems there’s another…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hunting like a Wolf-Pack
In CACM: This is about drones. But I am intrigued regarding the group cooperative aspects of a wolf pack. A long ago project with simple robot inventory tracking devices looked at how devices could divide autonomous and cooperative…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Risk and the Nimbleness of Brands
In K@W: " ... Brands that take bigger risks are reaping greater rewards in the world of digital marketing, write Google’s Eric Solomon and Gopi Kallayil in this opinion piece. ... No matter what the task, taking risks is…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Learning from Videos on the Web
Learning is the ultimate AI. Accurate, unsupervised learning of readily available resources is good too.Robot Learning Manipulation Action Plans by “Watching” Unconstrained Video from the World Wide WebYezhou Yang University…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dynamic Data
The Utility and Power of Dynamic DataBy Tim Smith We’re living in the data revolution, where the old view of data and how we use it is changing for companies and end users. Many don’t realize how these changes have occurred,Sami…
From BLOG@CACM
Launching a New Girls Who Code Chapter
What is involved in starting a new Girls Who Code club?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Managing Complex Technology Projects
Via Deloitte:3 Rules for Managing Complex Technology ProjectsDefine desired business outcomes, assemble the project team, and stick to a reasonable project plan.Many companies around the world invest enormous time and money on…